


Ponderosa

by sepulchrave



Category: History Boys - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 15:14:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14108142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sepulchrave/pseuds/sepulchrave
Summary: Sheffield-specific snapshots of childhood friends consuming a lot of sugar, overthinking life and failing at heterosexuality.In this house we love and cherish these boys; poetry; Yorkshire as a concept; etymology; the Cure; affectionate friendships; and the British working class.





	Ponderosa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hippocampers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippocampers/gifts).



> For Lilli, with thanks ! AK & the thb discord too x
> 
> I have an at-uni happy ending concept kicking about too if there is demand
> 
> cw for blink-and-miss-it allusion to canonical sexual assault

The only perk of living in the Upperthorpe Complex was that being inside one of the towers was the ideal excuse not to have to look at them. Or at least, this was the line tossed around Crookesmoor ever since Scripps could remember. He might have joined in with its tossing, had it not been for the fact that all four of the windows of his family's flat had views that extended less than a hundred yards before they were stopped short by the brown cladding of the next tower.

 

He remembers reading an article about the opening of a fancy new private school in London:  _ “How inspiring it will be for our pupils to learn about the neoclassical movement in an art lesson and rather than gain inspiration from styles in a picture book, they can quite simply look around them at their Grade 1-listed classroom.” _

 

How inspiring it is, Scripps had thought, to be learning about post-war Britain and rather than having to imagine the bleakness of Brutalist architecture, I need only glance up, past the bovril and out through the double glazing.

 

Understandable then, that a young Don Scripps spent his time jumping from one form of escapism to another, often with pluralistic fervour. The library was always a sanctuary, books adding another protective layer against reality. This might have been what paved the unexpected way to Cutler's, and from there to Posner's neat little terrace and – wonder of wonders – the piano.

 

Digressions and Sheffield-specific inside jokes aside, Don always did know what the actual and only advantage was of living where he did. It didn’t fix the lift, give him his own bedroom, or quiet the commotion of drug-addled upstairs neighbours, but it was undeniably something. Ever since he was little it was the case; approach the towers from Martin Street and you're none the wiser — walk past them to the other side and there it is: the Ponderosa. Now that was an intriguing one, as park names go.

 

All the books they had sat on a small shelf in the family living room.  _ The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Animals _ couldn't hold one's attention for more than a few years, being mainly Latin and watercolour, and there was only so much a child could get of of  _ Das Kapital.  _ So it was that Don had become an avid reader of, not only the Bible, but equally  _ The Concise Oxford Dictionary _ . Although that particular read did eventually give up the ghost (somewhere after  _ sauté _ ; around the start grammar school and a fine-free library his dad would actually let him borrow from), it wasn't before he found:

 

**ponderosa**

pɒndəˈrəʊzə

_ noun _

  1. a tall, slender North American pine tree, planted for timber and as an ornamental.



 

***

 

_ Kissing gate. That's another odd name, _ an eleven year old Don Scripps had thought as he'd leant on one, looking up at his new friend and trying to explain how Ponderosa hadn't quite lived up to his own vague fancies of what the name should signify.

 

'It's just ... a tree. It's not even actually mysterious,' he'd said morosely after giving the details, gesturing at the dirty green expanse of the park below them. Then a bee had buzzed past his ear and the ivy bush, and David Posner had taken hold of his arm with a little bounce and a radiant smile.

 

'But – Scripps! Don't you think it sounds right…adventurous? Doesn't it remind you of frontiersmen, and stuff?' He did remember that word actually, thank you,  _ Oxford Concise _ . Posner had turned to survey the Ponderosa and was pointing, but he was practically glowing in his excitement and Scripps was finding him hard to look away from. 'All this,' his friend had declared as he pointed down the large grassy slope, 'is like the prairie, all covered in clover and bees…and…and the pedalo pond is a Great Lake,' here he had laughed self consciously and turned to Scripps. 'Sorry. That's daft.'

 

'No. 'S champion.'

 

***

 

That particular imagining may have been comparatively fleeting, but their joint and total exploration of the park over the years wasn't. Neither was the warm feeling in Don’s chest that came with David's company. The leafy, tree-shielded glade of daffodils just underneath the rusty playground was their immediate favourite, longstanding haunt. It was  _ fab _ the first time David saw it, and was even insisted upon as being  _ Romantic _ (capital R, Don had to hurriedly remind himself) the evening they went there after Hector's first poetry lesson in year ten. No one was wandering lonely as a simile any more, especially since Akthar had begun to join them.

 

The tradition that formed was more or less a rite of summer, being as follows:

  1. Posner, Akthar and Scripps
  2. in the little secret bit of the park,
  3. grass dry enough to sprawl on
  4. with a two litre bottle of Sprite (never 7up)
  5. and sweets from the newsagents



 

For example:

 

"Thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees / In some melodious plot / O f beechen green, and shadows numberless, / Singest of summer in full-throated ease."

 

Posner had sighed this stanza quite dreamily, and only the slightest bit affectedly, from where he had lain flat on his back in the grass, limbs lying outstretched where they’d been flung. The afternoon sunlight lent its gilt to the scene and they could just hear the faint warblings of distant traffic. Scripps had carried on gazing absently at him; wondering how on earth he could stand the prickle of summer grass on the back of his neck where his skin looked so soft.

 

'You know what that is, Davey?' Akthar said of the cooing above their heads, 'It's a dirty great pigeon,' and he threw one of the strawberry laces directly at Posner's face. His only response to this was to suck it into his mouth whole, as if it were spaghetti.

 

'Mind. You  _ will _ choke there, Pos,' Scripps laughed.

 

'No he won't. Not our expert on  _ full-throated ease _ ,' quipped Akthar without malice. At this Scripps, for some reason, felt his face heat up. Posner huffed, sat up, stretched, swivelled and flopped down again so that this time his back lay across Scripps' knees and his head no longer qualified as horizontal.

 

'Scrippsy,' implored David, taking Don's left hand and bringing it to his chest, 'Will you please make him shut,' now taking his right and holding them both together in mock-earnest appeal, 'up?'

 

'Pass us the pop then,' diverted Akthar, and Scripps obligingly pulled his hands free and rolled the bottle over to him.

 

'O for a beaker full of the warm South, / With beaded bubbles winking at the brim –' David giggled as he fended off another sugary missile.

 

'You,' accused Akthar, chin resting atop the bottle wedged between his knees, 'are not even quoting that right.' The guilty party merely smiled and reclined once more. 

 

'You could at least pick 'owt else, Pos,' Scripps grinned down at him. 'I've got traumatic memories attached to Keats at present.'

 

There had been a rustle against Scripps' thigh as Posner nodded. 'Fair.'

 

'But A Levels! Gone forever!' Akthar exalted softly, reaching in the vague direction of Posner's heraldic wood pigeon, 'Gustav Stress-man and his economic policy can fuck off once and for all.'

 

'Don't, Adil, please. If I ever have to think about the Weimar Republic again,' Posner declared, 'I may have to follow the example of Adalbert Stifter and have a fatal accident while shaving.'

 

'You've read Hesse now? And since when do you even shave?'

 

Posner turned a plaintive pout on Don. 'Scrippsy. Are you hearing this abuse?'

 

Don couldn't help but smile still more, suppressing the (apparently random) urge to tuck his friend's sunlit hair back into some semblance of tidiness. He cast about for a  subject change. 'Got a job in a bakery for the summer. You?'

 

'I'm on the bins,' Akthar put forward.

 

'Bookshop,' David had said, and followed it with 'Eyelash.' He gently poked the cheek of a nonplussed Scripps then held his finger up to him. 'Make a wish.'

 

'I wish you weren't so fucking awkward, mate,' said Akthar fondly, cutting across. Scripps had felt oddly flustered when he'd extricated himself from Posner with a little shove and the excuse of reaching for the Sprite. 

 

***

 

If Don's memory of all this is tinged with the same gold of that afternoon, it is only in part due to the fact that the relevant diary entry, 20th July 1982, describes it in detail. The page is footed with a scribble, under which it’s possible to make out  _ puzzling _ , and also the abortive neologism  _ pondersome _ . This had been what had prompted him to dig a bit deeper, etymologically speaking, and find:

 

**_Ponderosa_ ** **_,_ ** _ ponderous _ _ or  _ _ heavy _ _ in Latin. In Italian  _ _ ponderosa _ _ is the feminine form of  _ _ ponderoso _ _ , which means  _ _ strong _ _ ,  _ _ powerful _ _. _

 

That was rather apt, wasn’t it? Don Scripps, heavy with his own ponderings. Ponderously watching, waiting for nothing in particular  – or rather, a thing so terribly specific he had yet to be brave enough to find out what it was.

 

Yet today, the usual mantra doesn’t apply. He and David are approaching the Ponderosa from the bottom of the hill. Almost exactly a year on, he floats somewhere beyond post-exam hysteria, brimming over with the sense that whatever happens next is firmly in the hands of God. He doesn’t feel  _ heavy _ – quite the opposite. Definitely light on his feet; perhaps even  _ strong _ , edging more towards italian definitions, but  _ powerful _ might be overkill.

 

Anyway, he practically skips up to David. He swipes the cumbersome lemonade bottle from his friend, who had been struggling through the uncommon heat; overloaded with his satchel and a second bag of library returns.

 

This triggers a little, indignant sound of disorientation, and David turns to him questioningly.

 

'Got enough to lug, haven't you?' Don explains, sunnily.

 

'Do I look delicate to you?' There's no real sharpness to David's voice – it would be hard to get it past the kind of smile that’s spreading across his face.

 

'No,' Don answers plainly.

 

(At the same time, he is looking at the way perspiration has plastered little half curls along David's hairline; at how he flushes in the same places he freckles.)

 

They may be more or less of a height, but there's something about his friend — the angles of his face? His voice? — perhaps a thing half abstract, that unfailingly speaks of delicacy. A mastered fragility, acknowledged and turned and employed to ends unspecified.

 

They wait for Adil. Sitting in the usual place, their sides pressed against each other in lazy counterbalance, brings with it a comforting familiarity. David closes his eyes and turns his face towards the sun, his head tilting as if he would rest it on Don's shoulder. He doesn't. Why would he, after all? Don resolutely hopes he does no such thing. He is, he reminds himself, perfectly content to feel certain … Well, he's perfectly content to feel. Security comes with inaction, not disinterest. (Inaction in the classroom, in the park, in the shower, in bed late at night.) He's seen – he's felt – action in this context and can write it no letter of recommendation.

 

This, however, is beautiful — a moment at once both tentative and assured. The warm press against his bicep, the rustle as David turns a page, the sunlight in the leaves. Don is simultaneously comforted and thrilled. He'd describe the balance of the moment as delicate, if doing so wouldn't make it as obvious who was the cause of it all.

 

'You know,' David says softly, as if privy to his thoughts, 'Much as I find Larkin's worldview distasteful, you can't deny the way he always finds the poetic in the everyday. It's wonderful. At least, in the moments you look past his being a twat.'

 

Don absently picks a daisy by the base of its stem and twirls it in his fingers. He sets about trying to link it with another, and is so engrossed he doesn't notice David take an interest, just hears him say, 'We used to make loads of those. Do you remember?'

 

Somehow, Don manages to snap the daisy's stem for his pains. He sighs and lays it down gently on the grass amongst its fellows, who gather about it as if in mourning.

 

'You play the piano well enough. Fine motor skills et al.'

 

'Well. My hands are bigger now, I suppose.'

 

For a minute David seems to be somewhat distracted. He's still looking at Don's hands, his thoughts seemingly elsewhere, cheeks slightly pink. He brings himself back to reality with a soft, rather sheepish clearing of his throat. 'Here, let me.' 

 

He picks a couple of the flowers, and turns on the spot so he's now kneeling and facing Don.

 

'Shuft up,' Don protests. David's leftwards lilt means he's practically sitting in his lap, so Don hurriedly moves his legs apart. The only change this effects is that David is now sat between said legs. Bugger.

 

In this apparent fit of nostalgia, David has most likely brought his hands up to remind him of the finer points of daisy chain technique. This close though, Don can't bring himself to take his eyes off David's face. Specifically, he's transfixed by the way the small fans of shadows on his cheeks are more visible in the sunlight than the blonde eyelashes that cast them. Dragging his eyes away from this phenomenon to his friend's hands is a non-option as it risks focusing en route on — his mouth. Out of which he is actually going so far as to poke his tongue. Only the very tip, only in concentration … Shit.

 

'… press just here to make the hole wider,' his friend is saying, 'Then you can put it in.'

 

'Erm. Yes,' is his more or less valid response, tempered by a sudden drop in pitch. He has doubts about being able to say anything that isn't so gruff it'll mean David is able to feel the reverberations through his jumper —

 

Two things happen at once:

  1. Akthar’s voice rings out in an exceedingly dubious ‘Do I _want_ to fucking _know?’_
  2. A loaded paper bag manages to hit them both in the face simultaneously.



By way of explanation, a dazed Scripps silently holds his palms-worth of squashed daisies up to Akthar. Eyebrows are raised. Posner rescues the chocolate buttons from the grass.

 

Scripps doesn't even reach for his diary that evening. He just lies on the couch, frowning at the ceiling every so often. He listens to the Cure until his brother comes and changes the record.

**Author's Note:**

> ... queue your favourite Cure song .. Close To Me probs appropriate ... catch me on tumblr @ scripps


End file.
